Here's Richard Stevenson of The New York Times on the State of the Union address (emphasis added):
[President Obama was] building a broader argument that the nation needs to shift away from the focus on shrinking the government that has dominated politics for the past several years and toward a modestly more activist agenda aimed at tackling persistent inequality and the dislocating forces of a globalized, technology-driven economy.I think the president really should have proposed a mission to Mars last night -- a big, wasteful, pork-filled multi-year boondoggle of a mission to Mars, or to Mars and far beyond. Protecting Medicare, raising the minimum wage, increasing funding for early childhood education? Liberal, liberal, liberal; easy for the right to sneer at. But a big, expensive renewal of the space program? The arrested development cases who turned to Ayn Rand in adolescence because Rand seemed sort of like a sci-fi writer, and who never grew up afterward, would have a hard time denouncing something like that as liberal, hippy-dippy Big Government.
At the same time, Mr. Obama explicitly recognized the political and policy limitations of his stance after four years of budget deficits in excess of $1 trillion and broad public unease about saddling future generations with a crippling debt burden. There was no new stimulus plan, no mission to Mars, no ambitious plan to address the hangover from the housing market crash.
A massive pork-filled space mission would function exactly like the alien invasion Paul Krugman has long said would lift us out of our economic doldrums: we'd spend money and employ people getting stuff designed, built, and deployed in order to get the mission accomplished. The difference between these scenarios and the conventional liberal ones outlined by Obama is that quasi-militaristic scenarios involving outer space make overgrown eleven-year-old boys feel cool and tough and manly and heroic. And that pretty much covers most of the GOP and the Beltway establishment, right?
I don't think they'd oppose it. I don't think they'd even demand offsets for it.
So, yeah, let's go for it.
My comment dun got etted!
ReplyDeleteSome "503" message.
Wazzupwidat?
Ok, that one got through.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I had said that we all should be for a Mars program.
And the President could have sold it by saying, "And I want us to be the first nation on Mars!
We can do that in about the same amount of time as JFK allotted - so, let's look to have a manned mission go to Mars by 2020, and return shortly after that.
And then we'll need to do what we did after we Americans landed on the Moon, and built the Space Station: we need to build the first Mars Station.
We need to build that station and colonize Mars from there.
And we don't have much time to waste, because the way our planet, Earth, is warming and weirding, we need another planet to pollute.
And, as we know, there's no nation that can come close to us as far as pollution is concerned - except maybe now the Chinese.
So, my fellow Americans, I give you this challenge:
We need to go to Mars first, and colonize it, so that we can build the first dump there before the Chinese do, or we'll have to pay them to haul our garbage up there!
Who's with me?
USA!
USA!!
USA!!!